When performing repairs to an exterior of an automobile, surfaces must be carefully prepared to receive paint in order to avoid imperfections. Dents in body panels of an automobile are often repaired by filling them with a paste that subsequently hardens. The paste is then sanded to approximate the original contours of the body panel.
Body panels of automobiles can have a wide variety of shapes given the many models of modern and classic cars that exist. Sanding some body panels having complex contours in order to provide the proper shape and smoothness can be extremely difficult.
Sanding blocks are typically made to be used with industry standard straight line sanding paper, which has a width of 2.75 inches. The sanding paper may be attached to the sanding block by adhesion, Velcro® or other similar temporary attachment methods. Typically, sanding blocks are made so that the industry standard sandpaper fits onto the sanding block without having to cut the width of the paper. For instance, sanding blocks typically have a width of approximately 2.75 inches in order to accommodate the industry standard sandpaper.
One common sanding device is a wood block having a piece of sandpaper wrapped about its exterior. The wood blocks have flat surfaces and work well for sanding flat surfaces, however, they do not work particularly well for curved surfaces. The use of such common sanding blocks on curved surfaces often results in uneven sanding; mainly because such blocks are not bendable to the curvature of the surface being sanded, and because excessive pressure is often applied to some portions of the surface being sanded. Moreover, the application of excessive pressure may result in over sanding and rapid deterioration of the sandpaper, which, in turn, may damage the underlying surface.
In order to accommodate curved surfaces, sanding devices with a curved radius, typically a convex shape curve, are currently being used. The convex shaped blocks may be made from wood or a resilient material such as rubber. A user must use two separate blocks when sanding a surface that has both curves and flat areas, a first rectangular block for sanding flat surfaces and a second curved sanding device for sanding curved surfaces.
Recently, single blocks have been used that have one surface with a curved radius and another surface with a flat surface. However, this requires the sandpaper to be trimmed so that it fits both surfaces. This makes the single block difficult to use since a user would have to cut the standard sized sandpaper each time they wanted to replace the sandpaper on the block.
Therefore, there is need for a single sanding block that can be used to sand flat surfaces and curved surfaces without requiring a user to cut or modify the industry standard sized sandpaper to fit both surfaces of the sanding block.